Nucleic acid amplification is widely employed to produce sufficient starting material for techniques such as DNA cloning, nucleic acid sequencing, and the like. Amplified nucleic acid products are employed in numerous research, medical, and food and environmental monitoring techniques, as well as in many similar applications. In such techniques, particularly techniques in which large numbers of samples are handled, amplified nucleic acids are desirably tagged with unique, identifiable sequences generally known as barcodes or multiple identifiers. Such tags enable the pooling of amplified products to simplify handling while maintaining the ability to uniquely identify a particular product, for example, through its linkage to a tag associated with the originating sample source.
Methods for introducing sequence tags into amplified target nucleic acids are thus desirable. The present invention meets these and other needs by providing, inter alia, methods of amplifying and tagging target nucleic acids. A complete understanding of the invention will be obtained upon review of the following.